BIOGRAPHY 13
TABLE OF CONTENTS 15
INTRODUCTION 16
FOUNDATIONS 18
INTRODUCTION 18
LEARNING SCIENCES 19
Understanding & Pre-Existing Knowledge 19
Active Learning 20
Design of Learning Environments 21
Expertise 22
Learning and Transfer 22
Learning in STEM Disciplines 23
Wrapping Up 32
SCHOOLS 33
GAMES 38
GAMES AND LEARNING 42
PURSUING GAME-BASED LEARNING IN SCHOOLS 52
CONSTRUCTIONS 55
FEATURES OF SANCTUARY 55
A SAMPLE WALK THROUGH of SANCTUARY 61
CHARACTERISTICS OF SANCTUARY 64
Heuristics 64
Length of Play 65
Number of Players 66
Infrastructure 68
Simulation/Systems 76
Player Effort 78
Superstructure 80
PROCESS 84
EXPLORATIONS 86
FRAMEWORK 86
RESEARCH DESIGN 90
STUDY DESIGN 91
Population & Sampling 92
Data Collection 93
Operationalized Concepts (Observation) 93
Operationalized Concepts (Interview) 95
Analysis 96
SITE DESCRIPTION 96
About Bedford 96
Bedford High School By The Numbers 97
Experiencing Bedford High 97
RESEARCH 99
A THEMATIC EXAMINATION 115
Fun/Engagement 115
Usability 116
Role/Expertise Differentiation 117
Conceptual Understanding/Learning 118
Co-Design 119
REFLECTIONS & PROJECTIONS 122
REFERENCES 125
WORKS CITED 125
SOFTWARE 135
BOARD GAMES 136
INTRODUCTION
“You’re not competing with World of Warcraft; you’re competing with jail.”
- David Dockterman (attrib.)
Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) learning in the United States faces a crisis. Two of the most dire consequences of this crisis are 1) a citizenry lacking the science literacy necessary to engage in topics relevant to everyday life (ranging from stem cell research to the nature of x-rays) and 2) a shortage of young people preparing for careers in STEM disciplines and fields. One of the primary goals of science education is to prepare scientifically literate citizens (AAAS 1990, 1993, Millar and Osborne 1998). According to Miller (1998), scientific civic literacy requires: 1) An understanding of critical scientific concepts and constructs 2) An understanding of the nature and process of scientific inquiry 3) A pattern of regular information consumption and 4) A disposition toward taking action to make change in one’s lifestyle as necessary (adapted from Miller, 1998 by Squire and Patterson, 2009). Yet science literacy rates in the U.S. struggle to reach 20% (Miller, Pardo, Niwa, 1997). With regard to STEM careers and science identity, young people (particularly women and minorities) have difficulty imagining themselves as scientists, engineers, technologists or mathematicians. These careers seem out of reach or foreign to them and inconsistent with their interests (Lowell & Salzman, 2007).
My project is to question is whether, by providing players with two points of view on a shared scientific problem via asymmetric interfaces, under the conditions of play, that the challenges of epistemological pluralism can be made into a virtue for science learning, forcing quality communication, arguments, coordination, and co-strategization amongst participants. By provoking these behaviors, I expect that the game will overcome a chief challenge of experiential learning activities—the creation of tacit, unformalized experience and knowledge. To this end, I am building Sanctuary, an ecological simulation with one biology-themed and one mathematics-themed interface for two players. By requiring players to express their beliefs about the game world to one another in language in order to be successful, the design of the game encourages players to formalize their intuitions and experiences. This is an advance over existing learning game experiences, in which players are rarely required to formalize their strategies. This is also a naturalistic advance over other metacognitive interventions in which a play experience is literally halted in order to solicit formalized thoughts from players. If this approach is successful, then it may be applied further to an increasing range of epistemological frames and better science education. This has the potential to build cooperative, thriving learning communities with shared experiences.
The purpose of creating this work is to a) advance the understanding of teaching science (biology) and mathematics in existing scholarly and institutional context and b) understand the challenges of getting games into the classroom. The latter point has three smaller sub-questions: i) Does this game offer value to teachers? ii) Does this game offer value to students iii) Does this particular type of game play fit within an existing institutional structure? Much has been made about creative and play-based learning in extracurricular learning settings, but there is an argument for play-directed learning in schools.
How do you make a study of this sort of thing? I will be beginning with the learning sciences discipline of Design Based Research, a combination of formative evaluation and experimental psychology. My research in this thesis replaces psychological experiments looking to expose a new learning theory with a phronetic attempt to make sense of the culture around the game. Phronesis demands that we ask where we are going, who wins and who loses, and by what mechanisms, is it desirable, and what is to be done? I believe this makes sense as DBR demands continual iterative improvement to learning interventions.
Asymmetric interfaces potentially offer a solution to some of the problems with learning and game-based learning in particular, but it also introduces problems of power and control. This experiment pays close attention to the effects of power - students are age-graded, MCAS-taking, and given letter grades to evaluate and rank them in traditional school settings. The system may demand they contend with each other, but they can potentially work out their values locally. Another hoped for benefit is that the frame of play and the transgressive nature of the game helps them to pierce or be temporarily liberated from the top down space of school.
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